DrTom goes shopping for wedding clothes

(This is where I spent yesterday.  It sounds French, but it must be an American store because they readily take your dollars.)

This week Management dragged me to the mall to buy clothes--for me. You have to understand that I HATE shopping of any kind: for cars, for houses, for food, for gifts, for tools or music or whatever.  But shopping for clothes is absolutely the worst of them all.  I suppose that is why I haven't been clothes' shopping for 7-8 years.  I usually get a shirt or two and a pair of slacks as a gift from some female in my family at Xmas or on my birthday, and that pretty much does it.  I never need to go.

My closet contains shirts and sports coats that I bought 20 years ago.  I'm comfortable with how they look and how they feel, and they are happy to be worn once in a while.  When I adorn myself with that old gray button-down, long-sleeve Gant, it is like taking a buddy out for a beer.  We have grown old together and when my wife makes me turn a shirt over to the Salvation Army receiving center, it is like the death of an old friend.  I mourn for a couple of days and then stand in front of my closet trying to explain to the clothes gang I have in there how badly I feel, and that they are not going to be next if I have anything to say about it.  I tell them, "Just remain inconspicuous in here and she will never notice you.  But when I decide to wear you, you need to look fresh and new, or else." 

Well, push came to shove this month.  Next week, there is a big family wedding in Chicago.  The daughter of my wife's sister is getting married into a large Irish Chicago family.  We have a small family.  So there will be about 400 of them and about 13 of us, so the ratio of their eyes on us to our eyes on them is overwhelming.  My sister-in-law has been shopping for dresses for months, and the social pressure of this wedding has been transmitted to my wife and, in turn, to me.  "You will look sharp at this wedding!"  (Realize there is not enough ink in this computer to put all the exclamation points inherent in my wife's voice at the end of that last sentence.)  So yesterday, we went to the Bon-Ton.

As we entered the largish department store with the French-sounding name, my knees got a little weak as I uttered a French-sounding phrase (SACRE BLEU!) under my breath.  I'm sure there is a more appropriate exclamation in French, but I don't carry a cell phone with that kind of app.  The Bon-Ton tries to be helpful in that it was constructed with a set of marble stones embedded in the floor as you enter that you can follow, like the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz.  I even found myself whistling that tune from the movie as I stepped onto the path and skipped past the perfume section.  After that, the path winds around through women's shoes, women's dresses, and finally (my whistling stopped abruptly), at the men's clothing department.  The path even forks a couple of times along the way, taking you to other delightful departments with kitchen appliances and children's toys.  But we were having none of that fun this day.  We headed straight for the clothing area, a direction with which my wife seemed all too familiar.  "Hi Evelyn, hello Beverly", she spoke to various clerks as we strode past their various stations.   She was on a first-name basis with those who take those plastic cards and swipe them through those dangerous devices they have behind their counter.  I swear, I felt the wallet in my back pocket almost jump out of my pants when I realized how comfortable Management was in this foreign land.

We immediately looked for new jeans for me.  Mine are pretty worn, or don't fit my butt right, or are considered out of style, or whatever, according to HER.  What size, she asks.  I usually take 34x32, but in some styles I can wear a 33x32, but if they come short I need 34 or 33 x 33.  I'll show her just how technical shopping for men's clothes can be.  She'll never want to bring me here again, I thought.  So I lugged four pair to the changing room, modeled them all, and bought three.  Fifteen minutes tops, and I knocked off three items.  Then we examined the shirt racks.  I need a shirt for a sports coat I have in my closet (one of the old friends), I need a new shirt to go with my suit, and I need a couple to wear during the four days we will be out and about in Chicago.  What size, she asks?  Now I can really lay it on her.  Well, last time I bought one of these my neck was 15 1/2 and sleeve length was 33.  So I tried one of those, after removing a dozen pins, a piece of plastic wrap, and a cardboard stave around the neck of the garment.  Oops.  My neck is larger now and the sleeves seem short.  So I need to try a 16 neck with a 34 sleeve, but she can't find the same color in that size.  But I try that size in the wrong color and realize I need a 16 1/2 neck anyway.  So we really need a 16 1/2 neck with a 33-34 sleeve, but you need to try every shirt on because different brands fit differently.  Geesh I hate this.  Stick a pin in my eye please.  More pins to remove, more staves to discard, plastic and cardboard everywhere.  Who cleans up this mess?  I find three shirts eventually, some black socks, a new belt, two new ties, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Completely done in under an hour.

And matching the colors of shirts, with ties, and with sports coats or suits is totally beyond this color-blind guy.  It is like playing a game without rules.  Here is how it goes:

Wife: "I think the green stripe in this shirt goes well with that tie."
Me: "OK."
Wife: "But maybe there is too much blue in that tie for your sports coat."
Me: "OK."
Wife: "I really like the way this shirt picks up the brown tint in the coat and matches the tie."
Me: "OK."
At this point, I am no longer even listening.
Wife: "Are you paying attention to my suggestions?"
Me: "OK."

When it came time to pay the bill, I saw a little red sign by the cash register that said "20% OFF ON NEARLY EVERYTHING".  Wow!  That will take some of the pain out of this uninspiring hour.  But when I read the fine print on that placard, it said you get 20% off if you apply for a Bon-Ton credit card today.  Damn!  We already have a Bon-Ton card.  So you don't get 20% off after they have already sucked you in; they only give you 20% off during the sucking-in process.  And by the way, the "20% OFF" must have been in 36 font, while the "if you apply today" must have been in 4 font.  At this point, I have invested significant time out of my retirement trying on these clothes, and we are standing there with a pile of garments that Management is sure will make me look sharp, and I know that the moment we get home she will call her sister to enumerate the items that will contribute to my potential sharpness.  In other words, there is no turning back now, even if the placard had read we will charge you 20% MORE because you hate shopping and you look like a senior citizen.  If I backed out now, the pressure from the female side of my family would have crushed me like a cheap glass under a leather shoe at a Jewish wedding.

So I'm ready.  I have the clothes, a great-looking wife, and by next week I'll have an attitude appropriate for the big city event.  There may be 800 eyeballs looking us up and down next week, but let them look.  And when they ask me how it is I look so nice, I will say in my best Al Capone voice, "The Bon-Ton.  Evelyn sent me."

Exploring outdoors with a young child: the walk without "no-no's"

(Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it is good for young children.)

This past week I spent considerable time with my 2-year old grandson walking around in the forest on our property.  I keep a system of paths mowed through the woods, so it is easy to stroll around the place, even for a toddler.  After a couple of walks, I developed the following rules for myself:

1.  spend as much time as he wants walking around, which usually lasts about an hour
2.  let him choose the direction we walk
3.  let him throw all the sticks and rocks he finds on the path that he wants; 150 seemed to be about the desired number
4.  make the walk as much fun as you can, and nothing but fun
5.  never, and I mean, never say "no" to the kid while on this walk

I call this walkabout "the walk without no-no's".  This must be liberating, maybe even empowering, for the youngster.  If you go when the weather is decent and biting insects are not bad, there is little that can hurt him.  So let him do whatever he wants the entire time.  This is such a different experience than being in the house, where there are sharp, pointed objects ("no-no"), household chemicals and cleaning supplies ("no-no"), basement stairs ("no-no"), and valuable, fragile personal possessions ("no-no-no!").  There is none of that in the woods.

My grandson and I made a game out of it.  He saw me picking up rocks from the path and tossing them into the woods.  I do this so the mower does not hit them, but he loves to throw, so it looked like fun.  He chose sticks instead of rocks, but close enough.  I called these objects we were throwing "funky dogs".  I don't know why; the term just came to me.  "Brayden, here is another funky dog.  Grandpa just threw a funky dog into the woods."  Pretty soon, he was tossing and saying "funky dawg", or something close enough for government work.  I let him lead and I followed him.  Every time we came to a fork in the path, he stuck his little index finger in the air and said questioningly, "this way?".  I immediately said OK.  And he always looked at me with an expression of amazement, like "Can we really go the way that I said?  I'm too young to know the right way, or am I?"  The thing is, there is no right way or wrong way.  We spent much of our time going around in a big circle.  But who cares.  The circuit was new to my grandson, even though it was old and familiar to me.  But that was fine, because I was there for HIM, not for ME.  I wanted him to have so much fun that he would go again the next day if I asked him.

And we learned some natural history during our walk.  Two days ago we found a single, perfectly ripe black raspberry perched on the end of a spiny branch.  Brayden recognized it immediately as a raspberry, because his mother buys those exact fruits for him in the grocery store.  I told him he could eat it and, after popping it in his mouth, uttered the technical word, "umm".  But then I got a bit worried.  Maybe he will think that all fruit he sees growing on plants outside is edible.  Near the raspberry bush was a patch of gray dogwood, loaded with its white berries.  I pointed these out and used the word "yucky".  Yesterday, we took the same walk, saw some dogwood fruits, and HE told me these were yucky.  He remembered.  On this same walk, I heard and then saw a Hairy Woodpecker pecking on a dead white pine directly above us.  I pointed it out to Brayden, who stopped tossing sticks long enough to look.  I told him what it was and that it was pecking for insects on the tree.  He used the word "banging", but close enough.  He knows that word inside the house, as in "Brayden, don't bang on the table.  Brayden, don't bang on the wall." I never lectured the kid.  I just put some words, phrases, and ideas out there that I thought would have impact on him.  ("Are you pickin up what I'm layin down?").

Whenever we returned to the house and to his mother or grandmother, I encouraged him to retell the story of our walk.  On this occasion, he said something about a woodpecker banging.  I think a debriefing, or summary, at the end of the walk is good practice.  It must result in some sort of consolidation of ideas or facts in that little brain.  These young children are like a factoid sponge.  They can remember and retain a tremendous amount of information.  Remember, these are the young things who learn a foreign language in about three years.  If you are over 30, start today trying to learn a foreign language and then report back to me in three years.  You will be very disappointed with yourself.  But young humans can do it, and in some places in the world they learn 2-3 such languages.  So don't worry; their little head is not going to explode due to an overload of information.  Just ain't gonna happen.

Sometimes he tried to point out some natural history to me.  Yesterday, he raised his little index finger next to his nose, and said "Papa, listen, a bird". I admit he should have placed his little finger next to his ear, not his nose, but again this was close enough. Maybe anatomy is not his strong suit.  I listened and was able to tell him that it was not a bird, but a squirrel.  Sometimes a barking gray squirrel can sound like a bird.  And so it went, one light bulb after another going on in that young head, all positive and interesting, no restrictions, no rules, no household chemicals to worry about.
 
Now, obviously, if there are certain dangers like a grizzly bear or a cliff, you may have to invoke executive power to avoid a problem.  For example, yesterday my grandson wanted to sit on a stump that was covered with poison ivy.  Instead of saying "no, you can't sit there", I used it as an educational moment.  I explained that if you touched this plant, it will make you really itchy.  He bought my explanation, and chose another stump.  I don't like the notion that we teach that there are good plants and animals and bad plants and animals.  Some organisms have defense mechanisms that humans don't like.  No need to sugar-coat what goes on out there in the wild, but we don't need to start little ones off with a "them and us" attitude about the natural world.  You may not like the ticks that cause Lyme disease, but try to explain the fascinating biology that creature represents (if you know it) rather than simply denigrate the species in a word or two.

I was always amazed at how few questions university undergrads asked in a class that I taught.  Two-year old children may not ask that many either, but by the age of four they are non-stop questioners of everything they see or hear.  Take them on a walk in the woods, and you could be hoarse by the time you return after their Q&A session.  Never discourage this!  I have long been afraid that our school systems do discourage the asking of questions in students, so that by the time they enter college, they sit there dutifully, take notes, and keep their mouths shut.  Give me a 5-year old's curiosity over this sedateness any day.  So wake up parents and grandparents, get outside with those young ones and their questions, and their innate, unbridled wonder of the natural world, and leave those "no's" (AND CELL PHONES!!!) at home.

"In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."  Baba Dioum.

My grandson, ants, and E.O. Wilson

(If my grandson could speak English or if E.O. Wilson could speak Estonian, they would have a great conversation about ants.)

Last night I had a pleasure that only a grandfather who is a biologist with an interest in languages could appreciate.  My daughter was reading Harry Potter to her daughters on our deck.  Our 2-year old grandson became bored with that story (as I always do also), so he led me into my den where he demanded in perfect English to have a book to read.  He made no specific request, although he was pointing in the direction of my copy of Darwin's The Origin of Species.  Assuming that content would be a bit too esoteric for the kid, I chose one of my favorites: The Ants, by Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson.  It is a large format book and as I let him try to carry it to the deck, where all this reading was going on, he screamed, again in English, "It's too heaby!"  So I toted the tome to the deck, where he promptly curled up at the foot of his mother's lounge chair and opened up the book.

He turned immediately to the chapter titled "Colony Odor and Kin Recognition" and began to read aloud as children often do, slowly turning the pages when he finished absorbing the information on each.  I realized that he was reading in the language with which each baby in the world is born speaking fluently, Estonian.  (See my blog where I laid out this hypothesis several weeks ago.)  My joy was unsurpassed as I listened to my daughter reading the silly fiction about wizards and ghouls in English, while my young grandson read what I believe to be the finest bioscience book published in the past 25 years, in Estonian.  Of course, the book was written in English, so my grandson must be translating as he goes.  That kid is destined to do great things, if he can just get over his fear of real ants.

When he had finished reading, he looked at me with an expression that conveys a mutual understanding between mentor and student.  He could have told me directly what he was thinking, but because I no longer understand Estonian (as we all lose the ability to do, except for those babies actually born in Estonia), he had to convey to me through manipulations of his facial muscles what he wanted to communicate.  Apparently my grandson had thought until he read that chapter that ants identified one another strictly through the tactile sense; he had no idea that they used the olfactory system as extensively as they do.  The fact that there are differences in the proportion of hydrocarbons among colonies and not just species, allowing for colony recognition, astounded him.  My grandson had not yet read the seminal paper by Bonavita-Cougourdan et al. (1987), who advanced this idea, although I will download it for him today.  My grandson is extremely disappointed that E.O. Wilson will be too old to accept new grad students at Harvard when the toddler is old enough to apply. 

Tonight, we will read before bedtime again, and my grandson will appear in my den ready to select.  This time, I will recommend one of my favorites, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  I don't want this early education of his to focus too intently on the biological sciences, when there is so much good philosophy to study.  He is already in love with trucks and tractors, so a book about motorcycles should be right up his alley.

The life of a census enumerator

(Off to work.)

"Hello.  My name is Tom Gavin and I work for the U.S. Census Bureau.  Is this 455 Elm Street?  And were you living here on April 1 of this year?"  And so it goes, day after day, week after week, all summer long.   I knock on door after door, finding that most people are not home, leaving a NV (Notice of Visit) to call me on my cell, completing Enumerator Questionnaires---all for $13.00 per hour plus $.50 per mile reimbursement for the miles I drive.

I thought this might be an interesting experience; it has had its moments, and I've met some pretty nice dogs.  But for the most part, it is pretty boring.  Most people are happy to give out the information I require about their name, age, date of birth, and so forth.  You know, the 10 questions or so that we all ask and that most of you have answered, either by writing it on the form you got in April or by telling a person like me who appeared at your door.  Some of you have gone through this three times this summer.  Don't ask me why.  I just work here.  I am only doing what the Constitution of the United States requires the government to do every 10 years: count all the people living in the U.S. on April 1, and collect some ancillary data.

For some people it seems like a major inconvenience for me to ask these questions.  It only takes about five minutes, and it is only done once per decade.  Some interviewees act as though they are the busiest humans on earth, and they could not possibly take a few minutes to talk.  Others are obviously desperate to talk to someone about anything.  One lady took 15 minutes to complain about the crack cocaine-selling neighbors she had until they were evicted.  She feared for her life much of the time.  Then, she rambled on about an event in California where the police used a TASER on a man who was already down on the ground, and how terrible that was, and what is wrong with the police.  "Mam, I work for the Census Bureau."  I had a farmer all but grab me by the shirt and tell me to tell the President that farmers are getting a raw deal in this country.  That most dairy farms have gone under because of the price of milk.  "Sir, I work for the Census Bureau, and I don't know Barack very well." 

One guy told me that he had been on the internet a lot lately and that people really hate me.  Geesh, these people have not communicated their hatred to me directly, and I check my mail every day.  He was mad, and these people were mad, because this entire census operation was costing taxpayers $450,000!  I said, "Only $450,000?"  And he repeated the amount as though it was the largest number he had ever heard.  I didn't have the heart to tell him that the grand total was more like $14.5 billion.  If they knew that, those people would really hate me.  I would have to change my name to remain safe in a world where every U.S. citizen was gunning for Tom Gavin for committing such a huge sum of taxpayers' money.  I would have to dye my hair, gain 40 pounds, and wear plaid golfing slacks to go into town without being recognized.

I thought I would sign up for this gig, in part, to sample the residents of upstate New York.  To find out what people were thinking about the government and the world and their place in it.  But I'm not getting a strong signal about people in general.  Humans come in all shapes and sizes.  Some are pissed at the world and everything in it, probably because their life is a mess.  Some seem happy to help, feel good about contributing to this operation, and offer me iced tea.  Some are just plain lonely and want to talk to anyone who shows up about anything at all.  Some appreciate that enumerating the people in the country is an important exercise and were disturbed that I had not gotten to them sooner.  And still others couldn't care if the country went to hell in a hand basket tomorrow.  One young guy was gloating over the fact that he had been working for 10 years and he had never paid a cent of income tax--ever.  "Sir, I also work for the IRS."  Just kidding.

I don't regret working for the Census Bureau one bit.  I'm just a lowly enumerator like tens of thousands of others across the country.  But the job has given me the credentials to approach my neighbors, look them in the eye, and ask them some personal questions.  And while I detest the degrading effect that large numbers of people are having on the earth, I find individuals worthy of respect.  I disagree with some, I empathize with many, and I share a common territory with all.  And tomorrow morning, I will drive onto Main Street in a nearby hamlet, and ask those living there to share a bit of their time.

The secrets we keep from our spouses

(I admit I'm a cheapskate, but my wife didn't fare much better.)

Violent crime against tourists is not common in Costa Rica, but rip-offs happen all the time.  A number of years ago, my wife, son, and I pulled into the Hotel D-Galah in San Pedro near the university to check into our room.  I was about to start another 2-month field season studying understory birds in the southern part of the country, and our first stop was always the capital.  We parked the rental car, a Suzuki, immediately in front of the entrance of the small hotel and we went inside to check in.  A decade ago, most tourists rented Suzukis, which were notoriously easy to break into, and thieves knew you were a relatively wealthy, relatively naive gringo if you were driving this model. 

The thieves obviously staked out tourists just like us.  As soon as we went inside the hotel, they jimmied the back door of the Suzuki, grabbed our bags, and off they went.  We returned to the car to get our luggage only to find that there wasn't any, or at least very little, which made getting to our room easier than normal.  Surprising how liberating it is when you have no clothes.  The most valuable item in the car were my binoculars, and fortunately they missed those.  But they got nearly all my field clothes, underwear, T-shirts, and shorts, and much of my wife's wardrobe as well.  They also got my son's homework and several textbooks for his two months of upcoming home schooling.  He was not that unhappy, and I'm sure the thieves wanted to study American history.   Of course, I felt like an idiot, but we had assumed the car was safe only 20 feet from the check-in desk at the hotel, and we were inside for no more than 10 minutes.  We reported to the hotel staff that we had been ripped off; they acted unimpressed, and uttered an unconvincing "lo siento".  Welcome to our hotel.

We had homeowner's insurance, which covered items stolen while traveling, but we needed a police report to turn in to our agent when we returned home.  So, the next day, we went to the Hall of Justice in downtown San Jose, or whatever it was called, expecting to see Batman and Robin or their latino equivalent flitting about the place.  Instead, we found dozens of ripped-off gringos just like us trying to file a report of stolen possessions---State Farm Insurance must have been busy that year back in the states.  Our turn finally came, and we proceeded to itemize for the police official what we could remember must have been in our stolen luggage, and its approximate value.

Six pair of underwear--$15.  Four T-shirts--$50.  One pair of sandals---$20.  And on and on.  But then it got more interesting.  Silk shirt that my wife had gotten me for Christmas: my wife answered, $12.  "What?", I exclaimed.  "My Christmas gift from you only cost $12?"  Management acted a bit sheepish, but we continued.  We got to some jewelry items.  My wife listed a pair of earrings that I had gotten her for her birthday, she looked at me for the value, and I said, innocently, $15.  "You cheap bastard!", she shrieked.  Geez, what an idiot I am.  I could have told the cop $125.  Who would know the difference if I committed a little insurance fraud in order to maintain domestic tranquility?  Any male insurance adjuster would certainly understand and look the other way.  I was so stupid that I deserved to be ripped off by some Costa Rican slicky boys.  Take my watch, take the wallet out of my pocket.  Honesty is not always the best policy when dealing with your spouse; I'm living proof of this.  I'm not just a cheap bastard; I'm a stupid bastard as well.  Cheap and stupid!!

I learned a lot during those two days in San Jose.  Watch your possessions like a hawk.  Never leave anything of value in a car unless you stand nearby to watch the two Great Danes you keep inside.  Never travel with expensive underwear; they may be stolen, and then you have to go to a foreign store and buy their skimpy togs.  I hate shopping, but I had to replace the under garments that I lost.  So we went to a store where the only men's underwear they had was the size of a small handkerchief---black with pin stripes.  Boy, this burglary has become a hassle, although I did feel extra sexy whenever I sported my tico briefs back home.  And most importantly, when your wife asks you a question where the answer matters to her happiness, consider your response carefully before you open your mouth.  And prepare your face for the untruthful answer that you may be about to give.  Pretend you are young and innocent again, and try to orient your countenance to resemble that 7-year old boy you used to be.

The following year when I presented my wife with her birthday gift, she gave me that "was this only $15 look?"  I had conveniently left the receipt for this $125 purse in the gift box, although I acted as if I were embarrassed when she found it in there.  "Oh, sorry, I thought I had filed that away, in case you had wanted to return it for an even nicer model."  Of course, she refused.  She was happy and I was happy.  And if this purse was ever stolen in a foreign country, I would gleefully fill out the police report in front of my wife, looking forward to the part where I tell the official its value.

Tree planting programs: another form of greenwash?

(Is embedding tree seeds in cardboard a good idea, or just another round of greenwash?)

We hear a great deal about programs to encourage us to plant a tree.  It always sounds good, because most of us love trees, appreciate their value to us emotionally and ecologically, and understand the importance of wood and paper products that come from trees.  But when I scratch the surface of the suggestion to plant more trees for the environment, I find it is more confusing than amusing.

The supposition in these tree-planting programs seems to be that by planting a tree seedling or tree seed that we are rebuilding our forests.  But for this to be correct, it matters where you plop the baby tree, and what species it is that you are plopping.  Most ecologists are completely convinced that we should encourage vegetation native to a particular region to grow in that region.  I have often lamented in this blog the invasion of our local habitats by non-native plants.  So when someone gives you a tree seed and tells you to plant it, you need to know what species it is and if that species is indigenous to your area.

This week on Treehugger I read about a new "invention" where tree seeds are embedded in cardboard boxes.  When you are finished with the box, you bury the cardboard and a tree grows in that location.  Apparently, the company, which is called Life Box, has chosen tree seeds that are native to every major region of the country.  They think this has covered any criticisms about non-native species or invasive plants getting where they should not be (see comment by MycoKat here).  But it is not as simple as that.  For example, white birch is native and common in forests about 150 miles east of Ithaca, NY, where I live, but it is not found in the forest around Ithaca. If those seeds were used in their boxes, would those boxes only be used for shipping to eastern NY and not central NY?  I doubt it.  Humans have this tendency to superimpose their mental image of a map on the landscape, and it rarely matches the ecological reality that has been in place for centuries.

Let's assume you now have the seed of a tree species that is truly native to the exact location where you live.  But then, where do you put the darn thing?  You can always plant a tree in your front yard.  Nothing wrong with that.  That tree can be appreciated for its beauty for decades, and it produces oxygen and sequesters carbon dioxide during its life just like the next tree.  But this has nothing to do with regenerating a forest.  If you were interested in helping out our forests, I guess you might plant the thing next to or inside an existing forest.  But that is really unnecessary.  Forests produce plenty of seeds from the trees that are already there and don't benefit from our putting one more seed in the ground.  Evidence of the abundance of forest tree seeds can be found in your gutter every year, when you clean out the maple, ash, and elm seeds that have blown in there.  Squirrels and blue jays are moving nut seeds around the forest and planting them all the time.  Let nature do its thing.  It knows more than we do anyway about where to put these propagules.

So where should you put tree seeds if you have them?  I suggest putting them where they are really needed; put them where there is absolutely no forest at present, but in a location where there WAS once a forest that contained the species of trees you are about to plant.  An abandoned lot in a city would be a great place to undertake such a project, assuming there is still viable soil there.  That is, create a forest, however small, where there was not one before (or, at least, not in a very long time). Or what about an area that was once mined for some commodity, where the vegetation was skimmed off the surface of the earth for miles around?  That area needs help.  These examples would be true efforts at restoration.  Abandoned hayfields or meadows rarely need this kind of help; seeds from trees in nearby forests will find their way there.

My point is that planting a tree sounds as American as apple pie.  What could be wrong with a wholesome activity like that?  But this "movement" has all the characteristics of a program that makes us feel good without accomplishing anything substantive for the environment.  As a conservation biologist, we don't need more trees, we need more habitat.  And habitat, whether it is forest, or prairie, or marshland, mostly needs protection to develop on its own.  Only then will it contribute to viable populations of biodiversity, as well as provide all those "ecosystem services" like carbon sequestration that are so important.

Natural mortality in deer: the inescapable comparison to humans

(An adult female Columbian white-tailed deer marked with an ear tag and a plastic collar for identification in the field.)

For my Ph.D. research I studied a population of white-tailed deer located on a national wildlife refuge in southwestern Washington.  The refuge was situated on the north bank of the mighty Columbia River and this particular subspecies of deer is called Columbian white-tailed deer.  They were placed on the Endangered Species List in the early 1970s, which led to my research project on this rare form of North American deer.  The only other form of white-tailed deer that is considered endangered is the diminutive Key Deer of Florida.

As you all know, most populations of deer in North America are subjected to sport hunting every fall.  Historically, hunts allowed for male-only kills, but this has been greatly liberalized in recent decades to allow hunting of females to reduce the size of this now abundant (= too abundant) species.  One of the demographic observations about deer populations is the sex ratio of adults---it almost always favors females significantly.  Sex ratios among adult deer typically are 3-4 females for every male, and this is generally attributed to the fact that males are hunted and females are not.  That is, more males were removed from the herd every year due to legal hunting than were females, and this resulted in a skewed sex ratio favoring females.  Reproductively speaking, this is not a problem because most species of cervids (which include elk, moose, and caribou) have a promiscuous breeding system, where each male breeds with as many females as possible.  An adult male white-tailed deer can breed with 10 or more females during a single breeding season in the fall, so the skewed sex ratio does not inhibit reproduction at all.  Essentially, all females get pregnant every year regardless of the sex ratio.  Larger, older, and more experienced males probably obtain more copulations than younger, smaller, and less experienced males and, therefore, the larger bucks sire more offspring.

So, I had at my fingertips a non-hunted refuge population of deer to study, and I was free to choose the research questions that were of interest to me.  I decided that this was an opportunity to study natural mortality and demography in this population of about 200 deer found on a somewhat contained (i.e., surrounded by water or habitat not used by whitetails) piece of land of about 2,000 acres.  I lived on the refuge and worked on the population daily for two years.  At the end, an interesting demographic pattern emerged, which informed my view of what makes male mammals tick.

My primary method of studying this phenomenon was to systematically search the refuge with my assistant, Bill Half Moon, for dead deer.  When we found a carcass, I estimated the month in which it had died, its location on the refuge, and I collected the skull for later analysis.  This analysis involved removing a tooth, and staining and sectioning the tooth to reveal cementum annuli that can be counted to determine the age of the animal at time of death.  It is sort of like counting tree rings.  Of course, the sex of the deer was easily determined from the skull as well.  If the carcass was fresh enough, I took it to Oregon State University to be necropsied, and to determine the cause of death.  I also cracked open a femur to examine the bone marrow, which can be scored subjectively for fat content, which is a crude method of evaluating the nutritional health of the deer at time of death.

It turned out that in this population the sex ratio among adults was still 3-4 females for every male.  However, we knew that the sex ratio at birth was nearly 1:1; in fact, there were probably slightly more males born than females, a typical pattern in mammals.  That is, the sex ratio started out about equal, but by the time males and females were two years old or older, there were many more females than males in the population.  We knew that males were not leaving the refuge, or emigrating, so the only other explanation for the skewed sex ratio was mortality.  Between birth and adulthood, males died at a younger age than females.    Males, on average, were living about 3.5 years, while females were living an average of about 6.5 years.  The oldest male skull I recovered was 7.5 years old; the oldest female skull was 13 years old.  In other words, males were cycling through the population at a faster rate than were females.

To put it bluntly, males are just more reckless than females. They get hit my cars, they get caught in barbed wire fences, and they drown in ponds more often than females.  But the most common cause of death in males was their poor physical condition immediately after the rut, or breeding season.  In this population, the rut began in November and lasted about two months.  At the end of the rut, we are in the middle of winter when conditions are not conducive to recovering body condition, and males paid the price.  It is known that adult male deer spend so much time and energy locating and tending females in heat during the rut that they lose significant body weight.  They increase physical activity during this important process and they decrease the time they spend feeding.  The result is that males are worn out and emaciated come January, all because they want to make love to as many females as possible.  In fact, you could say that many males literally mate themselves to death.

The similarities to other mammals including humans is inescapable.  The mortality rate of male humans is higher than females, especially among those just entering age of reproduction.  Males take dangerous chances, largely in an attempt to increase their status in the eyes of females, whether they know it or not.  The winners can win big, with multiple mates during their life and the possibility of siring many offspring.  Of course, modern contraception has changed the outcome of this male behavior somewhat, but our behavioral tendencies produced over the past 4 million years of human evolution continue to play out regardless.

(See full citation and an Abstract of the monograph produced from this research.)

Memories of the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya

My first evening in the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya was spectacular.  I will never forget that night.  We stopped the safari vehicle as the sun was setting.  It was during the famous mammal migration, and we were surrounded by wildebeest in all directions, as they stopped moving for the night.  The grunting sounds of this interesting animal could be heard everywhere.  I will never forget those few hours.

Our guide, Meshak, a local Masai.  He knew the birds cold.  Also, my two safari-mates from the UK, who were on their honeymoon.  When I got married, my wife and I went to Niagara Falls--ugh.






A large bull elephant, who appeared to be asleep.  I love this savanna habitat.  Visibility is fantastic.

Male olive baboon eating a baby Thompson's gazelle, which he just caught.  We were close enough to hear the crunching of bones as he ate.  Baboons have always scared me.  Short, robust, and strong as hell.

The main reason you go to the Mara in August or September is to see one of the most amazing wildlife spectacles on earth--the migration of wildebeest, zebra, and Thompson's gazelles.  Here they are crossing the Mara River on their way to Tanzania.  They will return to the Mara in about six months, as they follow the greening of the grasses, their primary food.

Some of the river crossers are not so lucky.  They get picked off by Nile crocodiles, which the crocs let lie around for a couple of days to decompose a bit.  Then, the carcasses are easier to tear apart and eat.  Here, a vulture (I believe an African White-backed Vulture) is feeding on a dead wildebeest in the croc pantry.

We saw two wildebeest picked off by crocs, which grab wildebeest from beneath as they are swimming the muddy river.  The mammal is pulled under the water, where it drowns.




A croc lying by the side of the Mara River.  You could see a couple of dozen crocs at any one time during migration.  The mammals always cross at particular sites along the river that are conducive to jumping into the water and getting out in one piece on the other side.  And that is where the crocs congregate.  Everyone seems to know what the game is about.

I always thought that the Iron Man competition should occur right here.  If you can swim to the other side and back, and survive, you win.




Some of the "winners", making it to the other side.  There are mostly wildebeest here, but you can see at least one zebra in the mixed group.

Death seems to be everywhere at this time of year.  This wildebeest did not even make it to the river, and was probably killed by lions.

A warthog peeks out from behind a tree.

Female cheetah and her sole surviving cub.  It was thought that the other cubs had been killed by lions or hyenas.  I almost got to see this mother chase a Thompson's gazelle, their main prey here.  But the cub ran up to the mother as she was stalking the gazelle, and alerted the gazelle, which ran off.  The mother immediately turned and barked sharply at the cub as if to say, "Stay where I put you when I am about to hunt if you want to eat!"

The female later killed a "tommy", and presented it to the cub for investigation and food.  "You see, this is what we are after".

A small herd of Thompson's gazelles.  Everything likes to eat "tommies".

The colorful women of a Masai village.

The men are pretty elegant as well.  Young Masai boys usually attend 5 years of "warrior" training.  But our Masai guide was sent to an "English" school where he learned to be a wildlife guide.  Is this like college prep vs. trade school training in American public schools?

A lioness who, along with another female, had just killed a zebra.  She is still hot and panting.  Notice how she blends into these dry savanna grasses.

The dead zebra had not even been fed upon yet.  I think the lionesses were simply too tired and too hot to eat.

A Defassa waterbuck, one of many species of antelope found on the Mara.

Wildebeest, as far as the eye can see.








I will never forget the two days I spent in the Masai Mara, and I hope to return one day soon.  North America once had a wildlife spectacle similar to the incredible phenomenon of East Africa, when bison were numerous and migrated across the plains of the Western U.S.  That wonder of the animal world ended in the 1870s.  Let us hope that the large mammal populations of Africa remain viable for generations to come.

Birds in June

(Robin's nest in a Syringa.  Why are the eggs of the American robin blue?)

I spent an hour this morning appraising the avian situation in my forest.  Male singing has changed over the past month in an interesting way.  Species that were quite vocal earlier in May are now fairly quiet, but others are singing constantly.  Dark-eyed juncos, chipping sparrows, song sparrows, black-capped chickadees, wood thrushes, all the woodpeckers, white-breasted nuthatches, eastern phoebes, American robins, gray catbirds, and blue-headed vireos are relatively inconspicuous now.  I assume that the frequency of bird song is correlated to the stage of the nesting cycle.  Males sing to keep other males at arm’s length and to attract females.  When the male or female (usually the female) is incubating eggs or tending nestlings, males tend to be quieter.  I am sure this is to avoid attracting predators to their territory, where the nest is located.

But other species are quite vocal.  Ovenbirds, red-eyed vireos, great-crested flycatchers, eastern wood pewees, and veerys are still waking me up early in the morning.  Because they returned from migration later than the group of silent species, some of whom are year-round residents, these late arrivals may be further behind in their nesting chronology.  If they are mated, then they must be at an earlier stage of the nesting cycle.

Some of this can be documented.  The phoebe nest hatched five nestlings about three weeks ago, and they are now working on their second brood of the season.  By the way, I covered this bird in a blog several weeks ago.  It turns out that this pair nested on a window ledge on the back of my house rather than on the light fixture on the front.  The chickadees that I described last week are now incubating eggs.  And I found a nest yesterday of an American robin in a Syringa shrub next to the house with four eggs.

But let’s review songbird nesting chronology a bit.  Males establish territories, sing, and, if fortunate, acquire a mate.  One or both adults build a nest, which is distinctive to that species (i.e., mud, moss, grass stems, twigs).  Bird nests are truly marvels of the animal world.  How birds actually build these structures amazes me constantly.  During this stage, they copulate, which is done by the male hovering in flight above the female; their cloacas touch, sperm is transferred, and voila. When the nest is complete, the female will start laying eggs.  Egg-laying occurs early in the morning, and the female lays only one egg per day.  Even the famous while leghorn chicken, which has been bred to do nothing but produce and lay eggs, can only lay one egg per day.

Clutch size varies from about 3-6 in temperate species, but the number is relatively fixed within a species.  One of the parents, usually the female, then begins incubating the clutch after the next-to-last, or penultimate, egg is laid.  Eggs do not begin developing until the heat from the female’s body is applied during incubation.  The last egg laid, which occurs one day after incubation starts, will hatch about 24 hours after the rest of the clutch; this “runt” of the litter is often the one not to survive because it is always one day smaller than its siblings.  Incubation takes about 10-14 days, depending on species, and then the real work begins.

One or both parents must then find food, and I mean a lot of food, to feed the hungry nestlings.  These morsels usually consist of insects or other invertebrates, which are high in protein.  Nestlings fledge from the nest after 10-12 days.  For large birds like hawks, incubation and the nestling period are about three times as long as for small songbirds.  If you have never found a nest of a small bird and followed it, you should do so.  The rate at which nestlings grow is truly astounding.  You can see the difference in size and feather development every 24 hours.  But here is a puzzle.  Those nestlings have to defecate several times per day, and yet you will see no feces in the nest.  Where is it?

Will you cause the adults to abandon the nest if you find it and check on it up close once or twice a day?  It depends.  If the adults are only at the nest-building stage, they may abandon that effort and relocate because they “think” a predator has found the nest.  Why continue if something is going to eat your eggs?  But once they have reached incubation stage, they will usually not abandon the nest.  Too much time and energy have now gone into that nest to just walk away.  So find an active nest, observe it until the babies fledge, and report to us here.  There are worse family activities in which you could be involved.

Once the young have fledged, many males will begin singing all over again in the hopes of attracting a new female who wants to nest.  And on it goes, throughout the ages—the stuff of which poems are made.

On the importance of homemade strawberry jam

(Scotch and homemade strawberry jam.  A nearly complete diet for DrTom, leading to order and homeostasis.)

There are certain stabilizers in our lives that become absolutely essential to our feeling of order and homeostasis.  For some, it is finding the morning paper on the front porch by 7am every day.  For others, it is that hot cup of organically grown Cafe Britt coffee about mid-morning.  And for still others, it is watching the Yankees play on tv during the summer.  One of mine is having a single-malt scotch and a cigar in the evening, something I have discussed many times.  It is during that hour or so that I contemplate the day's activities and life's memories--of children and grandchildren, of gardens and plantings growing around my property, of former students who left an impression.  I am counting on having those memories until senescence and lack of eyesight completely take over and all I can do is pet the dog or the woodchuck, or whatever that furry thing is that is lying at my feet.

But there is one other stable element in my life-homemade strawberry jam. Most years, my wife and I visit a local farm where you pick your own strawberries.  We bring them home, clean them up a bit, and my wife makes jam.  That's right.  Women make the jam, men mow the lawn.  This division of labor has worked pretty well for centuries, so far be it from me to change it.  But this year, my wife couldn't pick berries because she had some eye surgery the day before and was instructed not to bend over.  So, I went to the berry patch alone, wearing my white head band to keep the sweat from rolling into my eyes and sporting an Aussie hat.  Bending over those raised beds of berries is tough on a "mature" body like mine, so I found that actually lying down in the narrow row next to the bed worked best, and then inching forward as I depleted the ripe fruit that was close at hand.  No one else in the field was using this technique, possibly because it looked like I was a Navy Seal crawling up the beach to surprise the enemy in Mogadishu.  I didn't care.  It was more comfortable than bending over, and this color-blind naturalist needs to be close to his work to find red berries easily.  I picked 20 pounds and went home.

When I got home, it became clear that my wife was busy preparing for guests who were arriving the next day, and the chore of making jam would pretty much fall on the now ex-Navy Seal.  Amazing how some men can lay aside their M-16 and grenade launcher after a successful mission in the berry patch to don an apron and to manipulate a canning jar in the kitchen.  But on this day, that is what I did.  

As my wife barked instructions, I snapped to attention.  Clean fruit, cut it up, and mash until you have 5 cups.  Put in pan on stove, add a pat of butter, and one box of Sure-Jell.  Bring to a boil.  Then, add 7 cups of sugar.  Bring to a rolling boil for 1 minute.  Remove from heat.  Skim off solids on top of liquid.  In the meantime, I had a very large pot on the stove containing boiling water and the jars, lids, and rings.  Steam everywhere.  Lots of heat in that part of the kitchen.  This is why old farmhouses used to have a summer kitchen to do this kind of work.  Remove the jars, fill with cooked jam, wipe off the rim of jar with a hot, wet paper towel, place lid on top, and screw on a ring.  Then place all the filled jars back into the water bath to boil for a few minutes.  Two fingers and 1 thumb now burned.  Remove from heat, set on table, and enjoy the sound of those lids snapping down into place as the vacuum inside the jar takes hold.  As one batch is finished, begin the assembly line for the next load of fruit.  Two more fingers burned.  Keep going.  Don't stop or slow down, or you will find something else to do.  It is hot, sweaty work, but someone has to do it.  It is essential work, because we are talkin homemade strawberry jam--nectar of the Gods, sweet memories, winter morning comfort.

I made 20 pints of jam, so this should last until next June.  But my wife has a tendency to give our jam away as gifts.  And our grandchildren are always asking for "Grandma's jam".  But not this year.  Because I labored over the brew, I now hold the keys to this year's supply.  I love my grandkids, but all that sugar is probably not good for them.  And little kids need to learn that life is not always fair.  And maybe they are allergic to red things.  That you don't always get what you want, when you want it.  And that "Grandma's jam" is sometimes "Grandpa's jam".  And Grandpas can be stingy.

So, toast with strawberry jam in the morning, and a single-malt scotch and a cigar in the evening.  Throw in a couple of vitamin pills, and I suppose this is a nearly complete diet leading to order and homeostasis.